Opinion

The eight-step road map to murder that might save women's lives

There are eight steps to murder, eight stages that lead to the death of a woman at the hands of her partner. This year alone in Australia, we know 36 women have died violently.

In most cases, we don’t know yet who killed them. But new research might well stop killers in their tracks because Jane Monckton Smith is on to them.

There are warning signs for controlling, potentially violent behaviour.Credit:iStock

She’s been researching violence against women for 30 years and has completed a forensic analysis of more than 370 murders by men of women in Britain. She is a forensic criminologist at the University of Gloucestershire and for the past three years she has been through every single case of femicide by an intimate partner, looking for some kind of pattern, signs that might make it possible to predict who will end up dead at the hands of a current or former partner. She’s found that pattern and has just published her findings in the academic journal Violence Against Women.

She has one key tip. If your new boyfriend is super-attentive and tells you about his previous "psycho" girlfriend, that's a warning to get out as soon as possible. It’s a sign he doesn’t take responsibility for his actions when difficulties arise in a relationship.

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Monckton Smith used the data from Counting Dead Women UK, a real-time list of murders at the hands of men and the prototype for counts now happening internationally, as well as in Australia. Then she sifted through the data, looking for differences but also finding astonishing similarities. The eight steps she discovered in almost all of the killings were clear:

The perpetrator had a history of stalking or abuse in previous relationships. That holds true except for those in the dataset in first-time relationships.

The relationship develops very quickly. He is looking for commitment and that really means, in his eyes, forever. God forbid you should want forever to end.

He starts to exert controlling behaviours. Where are you? What are you doing? Who did you speak to today? Who are those text messages from?

An event or discussion challenges his control. The woman may decide she wants to end the relationship or he experiences personal difficulties such as losing his job, causing an abrupt change in his circumstances.

Escalation – he tries to reassert control by increasing the intensity or frequency of contact, stalking, or threatening suicide. It’s about getting "his woman" back and diminishing any challenge to his status.

By now, the relationship is dangerous. If the woman is lucky, he leaves and she will then be his most recent "psycho" girlfriend. Or he might attempt to exact revenge. In the worst case, he starts considering murder as an option.

Planning homicide – buying weapons, making opportunities to get the victim on her own.

Homicide – which may not be limited to the woman but also her children.

It was only while writing her book In Control, to be released next year, and chatting to her daughter that they realised the daughter’s partner was exhibiting some of these characteristics.

Monckton Smith says the most troubling sign to her is stage two, when a man is trying to gain a "forever" commitment at a very early stage. Is it romance or is it more sinister? Is it about control?

She began her career as a police officer in the 1980s, then worked as an advocate for the families of homicide victims, to help them through the criminal justice system. She has conducted domestic homicide reviews.

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"One thing that had shocked me in the beginning was the amount of planning that goes into these homicides," she says. "They are not spontaneous. It was only when I started going through all the cases it became clear. Once I could look at what happened before the relationship, during the relationship and after the relationship, I started to develop a nuanced picture of what was going on in the minds of the perpetrators."

Too much of the conversation was – and still is – about victim blaming. Monckton Smith’s analysis makes it clear that women are not to blame for their murders. It’s men who want control.

She spent years in the minds of killers to find ways to stop them. About 30,000 women are killed by the partners each year around the world.

If we see the roadmap to homicide, perhaps we can erect stop signs along the way.

"We’ve seen homicide averted," Monckton Smith says. "At every stage you can intervene. That is an opportunity to save a life, an opportunity to get yourself out."

Jenna Price is a regular columnist and an academic at the University of Technology Sydney.